CHAPTER 48
ALEXIA BROWN.
He had asked about how my day was while his fingers interlocked with mine and he drove us to our supposed date.
I suggested changing my outfit. I wasn’t exactly dressed to the nines with a plaid skirt and a white blouse and the eversaving messy bun but he said I looked good.
That all of me looked good before he trapped me in his car with his scent, with his growl, with his small kisses to the back of my palm, with his words that had me wobblier than a cup of hospital Jell-o.
God, if he called me Tesoro one more time and looked at me like that, I would spread my legs in every direction he wanted.
Call me shameless, call me wanton but no one was going to resist this man and he knew it and he prided himself in knowing.
“You want me to wear a blindfold?”
I ask, my throat feeling a little bit parched.
“I’ll be by your side. Promise.”
His voice enveloped me with reassurance but spanking is one thing, blindfolding me means I’m walking in blind and while I like being blindfolded when we train, he’s gonna blindfold me in public.
Where there are lots of people, where there are people who might try anything.
“Christian I—I’m scared.”
Wrestling with the steering wheel by trying to avoid traffic, he brings my hand to his lips.
Another kiss.
Another flutter in my heart.
Another swarm of butterflies roils in my stomach violently.
“That’s the thing about trust, Alexia. It’s scary at first but when you jump and you let someone else keep you from falling all that fear from earlier feels like a weight pulled off your shoulders.
Your ex was a waste of space who wrecked you, I’m not going to promise to give you the world but fuck me, I’ll try, tesoro. I’ve never done this but I’ll try not to mess this up.
Do you trust me, sunshine?”
Nausea, the good kind of nausea hits me in the chest.
A light tingling throbs between my legs and tears I didn’t think I would have tonight sting right there at the back of my eyes.
“Okay”, I admit breathlessly.
“Gotta give me more than an ‘okay’, sweetheart.”
“I trust you. Yes, to the blindfold.”
“Attagirl.”
“Do I get to know where we are going now?”
“No.”
“That’s no fair, Christian.”
“Life’s never fair, tesoro.”
I smile but my heart beats warning me of something tragic.
It’s been so long since I’ve had something good but the problem with me? Every time a good thing happens to me, the universe finds a way of chasing away that good, reminding me who Alexia Green is and what kind of life she has before her.
***
“You do know I know we are on a plane, right? I’m guessing your private jet.”
“Yes”, his huge hands cover my entire butt cheeks.
I’ve always been curvy. Big boobs, hips that couldn’t be hidden no matter the type of picnic dresses I wore.
But Christian’s large build makes me feel petite, in his eyes, in his hands, in his lap.
And his lap might be my favorite seat.
“Then I don’t see the need for a blindfold”, I whine, planting my hands on that part of his chest that’s bare to me because of the open-collar shirts he likes wearing with his dark suits.
“I do. I get to trace every inch of this face without your eyes distracting me.”
“My eyes?”
“Those big blue eyes of yours, the color of a treacherous sea, the hue of the skies on a calm day.”
“Ooh.”
“What ‘ooh’?”
“I always kinda detested the whole blonde with blue eyes thing. People judge when we blondes have that kind of thing. Blonde and blue eyes are the perfect target for people to call you dumb and a whore.”
“Who called you that?”
I chuckle.
“No one really but you see it in their faces when you go asking for work at a restaurant and the first thing, they ask you is, will you wear this or that when serving customers? A waitress job suits you blah blah.”
His hand swallows the entirety of my cheek as his teeth trudge forward, capturing my bottom lip between them.
“The first time I saw you I knew you were smart.”
“Yeah?” the fact that I can speak while straddling him and his lips so close boggles my mind.
“You had your bat in hand ready to hit two men who would destroy you in seconds just for your baby.”
“Well, I do love my baby. I’d kill for her, you know.”
“Me too, tesoro. Me too.”
I don’t drill him for questions or the fact that he just admitted to loving Millie. Why you ask?
Because Christian Volkov kisses me like it’s his sole occupation.
I don’t even register when we land.
I don’t register when he pulls me up in his arms and we get out of the plane, the smell of briny sea air hitting my nostrils.
The swishing of the plane rings loud between us and I lock my hands behind his neck burying myself in his neck.
His only response to that is a low growl that fires my nerve endings and prickles my skin all over.
“Ready?”
I swallow hard my heart kicks in and I don’t easily trust myself not to fall when he places me on the ground.
“Yes.”
The sounds of waves crashing behind us tell me I’ll more than love this.
He kisses my cheek before his hands grip my waist letting my legs come into contact with the ground.
My shoes sink and I utter an ‘Oh my God.’
Christian yanks the blindfold away and the sight that greets me has my heart hanging in the air like the mythical sword of Damocles.
It’s not much but for a woman like me who’s ever been taken to Walmart as some sort of a date and fucked in the parking lot of said Walmart after the aforementioned date, this…this…is the best thing anyone has ever done for me.
A white mansion stands on the cliff, lights on, looking like a palace straight from a Disney fairytale.
That’s not all that catches my eye.
What catches my eye is the romantic setting a few feet from us.
A candlelit dinner with white curtains fluttering between.
A king-sized bed, placed on the mat with petals trailing all the way to my feet and behind us, I don’t even need to glance back to know we have a whole sea raging at our backs.
“Christian, I—I-.”
“They went overboard with the bed. I said a date and they brought a fucking-.”
“I love it.”
I turn around and hug him.
I feel his heart beat against his chest and that’s what I feel too.
That’s how my heart is beating too.
“You do?”
“It’s beautiful”, I coo, pulling away from his warmth our eyes locking.
“I’ve got another surprise for you.”
“Yeah? I don’t think I’m done cooing over this surprise though.”
“You’ll love it”, he assures me, taking something from his suit pocket.
How long has that been there?
The small gadget is placed in my arms and I eye it not knowing what it is.
Luckily Christian comes in to help me, “Press the button here. It’s a voice recorder.”
“O-okay.”
“Lex…I mean Alexia…we were wrong that night, we should have stopped, we should have listened when you said no.
Rhett said you wanted it, I swear I thought—but that doesn’t mean I should have engaged, I should have…taken advantage of you. I’m a thirty-year-old—.”
I don’t take a minute to listen to any more as my head registers whose voice this is.
Who the voice belongs to.
The same guy who came inside me and said I was his little whore and I would never be anything else other than that.
“Turn it off! Turn it off! Turn it off!”
I scream, stepping on the recorder till it breaks, till it gets buried in the sand.
I pull away from him, his touch scalding.
“W-why?”
“Suns-.”
“What did you do to Julius?”
Flashes of that night, that terrible feeling of being cornered and being able to do nothing strangles me.
“He’s dead”, Christian says matter-of-factly.
He killed Brad. I told him not to do it.
He killed Julius.
Wait did he…
“When? All of them?”
“Tommy was dead before you left the mansion, Trevor last week and Julius, tonight.”
“I told you not to. You—You touched me after…after you killed him?”
“I bathed.”
“That doesn’t make it any better! I told you I’d let God deal with them; I told you I didn’t want their deaths on me. They were cruel, I am not. I don’t condone-.”
“They were going to die either way.”
I laugh, bitterly, “You don’t listen, do you? You don’t take orders from anyone. You don’t respect people’s privacy.”
“Privacy is the last thing you and me have, Sunshine. I own you; you are mine.”
I am. And he knows it.
“Because I owe you money, then by all means I’ll work hard to-.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t bring in a meaningless debt into this. We are more than that.”
“No, we are not. No, we are not if you can’t respect my decisions.”
He takes one lengthy stride and captures my waist in his.
“You want to talk about respect? I respect the hell out of you, Alexia. For your bravery, for your cheery view of life but I’m not your average man. I’m not going to sit back and watch your nightmares steal air from people who deserve it. They occupy your nightmares; I wasn’t going to let them occupy the same earth you lived in too. You knew that when you told me about them, you knew that when I met you. Anyone who touches you doesn’t get to tell the tale, sweetheart, hate me or get angry but that’s the fucking reality.”
“Let go of me!”
“No. I’m going to feed you, I’m gonna watch you eat and you’ll talk to me till we are both beat and tired to do anything else.”
“I don’t want this anymore.”
“Lying brat”, he grits and with the little space we have between our bodies and just because I’m mad and I can, I raise my right hand and I slap him.
The slap echoes into the night.
My handprint taints his face like a face tattoo.
When his eyes are on me, all dark and greedy, my throat throbs and runs dry, my skin burning with an all-tickling sensation.
“Christian-.”
“Run, tesoro. Run.”
He lets go of my waist; it takes a minute to breathe a handful of air but his eyes?
His eyes are ablaze.
I obey him.
I turn around and I start running across the sand like a maniac.
It doesn’t take minutes for me to start hearing his footsteps behind me.
When I look back, he’s chasing me.
I’m the prey.
I’m the one he’s hunting for provoking him.
And every step I take away from him, knowing he’s right behind me hunting me thrills and excites me to no end.
I’ll spread my legs for you, Christian Volkov but it will be under my terms and my terms alone.
So?
Game on.